WestEd is a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization.Orey, M., V. J. McClendon, and R. Branch (2006). Educational Media and Technology Yearbook. Libraries Unlimited, Incorporated, Orey, M., M. Fitzgerald, and R. Branch (2004). Educational Media and Technology Yearbook The organization's mission states, "WestEd, a research, development, and services agency, works with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults."Educational Media and Technology Yearbook 2002.
In 2013, WestEd's annual revenue was approximately $137 million, with over 530 clients and funders including the United States Department of Education, National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Justice, and many state, county, local, philanthropic, and business entities. WestEd has been vetted and approved as a qualified service provider in the following federal contracting programs: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Program Support Center (PSC) Task Order Contracts, and the General Service Administration's Mission Oriented Business Integrated Services (MOBIS) Schedule (SIN 874-1: Integrated Consulting Services).
WestEd conducts various services – consulting and technical assistance, evaluation, policy, professional development, and research and development – aimed at supporting and improving education and human development.Branch, R. and M. Fitzgerald (1999). Educational Media and Technology Yearbook. Fusco, M. and S. Ketchum. (2002). Distance Learning for Higher Education: An Annotated Bibliography. Libraries Unlimited. WestEd’s work is focused in several key areas: college and career; early childhood development and learning; English language learners; health, safety, and well-being; literacy; schools, districts, and state education systems; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; special education; standards, assessment, and accountability; and teachers and leaders.Mathison, S. (2004). Encyclopedia of Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. E. Walker (2005). Educational Adequacy and the Courts: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Governance and legal status
WestEd is a joint powers authority, authorized by a California Joint Powers Agreement and governed by public entities in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah, with board members representing agencies from these states and nationally, including leaders from public and private education, business, and human services communities. Its board takes an active role in agency leadership and strategic planning.
A nonprofit, public research and development agency, WestEd is tax exempt under Section 115(1) of the Internal Revenue Code, and, as such, meets the giving guidelines of philanthropic organizations.
History
WestEd was formed in 1995 when the Southwest Regional Educational Laboratory (SWRL), located in Los Alamitos, California, merged with the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (FWL), located in San Francisco.Profiles of the regional educational laboratories (SuDoc ED 1.302:P 94/13), page 23. SWRL and FWL were established in 1966, shortly after the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (Pub.L. 89-10, 79 Stat. 27, 20 U.S.C. ch.70), a United States federal statute enacted April 11, 1965.From U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 79, p. 27 - 58 http://nysl.nysed.gov/uhtbin/cgisirsi/M8BhPv34Ie/NYSL/7400017/524/79170 The Act funded several areas of primary and secondary education including professional development, instructional materials, resources to support educational programs, and parental involvement promotion. FWL and SWRL were established under ESEA (1965) Title IV, which established funding for educational research and training.
Research and technical assistance centers WestEd operates several federal research and technical assistance centers.
Regional Educational Laboratory West The United States Department of Education Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Program is a network of ten laboratories.
WestEd was awarded the contract to operate the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West (serving Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah) for the current period, running from January 2012 through the end of 2016. Under the current contract, REL West partners with regional educators to form research alliances dedicated to addressing regional needs and increasing the use of data and evidence in education decision-making.
WestEd has operated REL West since the REL Program's inception in 1966. In the previous contract cycle (2006–2011), REL West published over 30 peer-reviewed studies and held 36 technical assistance events bridging research, policy, and practice, with well over 2,000 participants.
Other federal centers WestEd is also the prime contractor operating four other Comprehensive Centers: the West Comprehensive Center, which serves Arizona, Nevada, and Utah; the Mid-Atlantic Comprehensive Center, which serves Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia; the Center on School Turnaround; and the Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation.
WestEd is a subcontractor on six other regional Comprehensive Centers — performing program tasks for the Central Comprehensive Center, Northeast Comprehensive Center, and South Central Comprehensive Center, and performing evaluations for the Great Lakes Comprehensive Center, Midwest Comprehensive Center, and Pacific Regional Comprehensive Center.
In addition, WestEd is the prime contractor for the Northeast Regional Resource Center, which serves Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. WestEd also conducts research for the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands, administered by Education Development Center, Inc. and serving New England, New York, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands.
Programs and services WestEd is organized into several programs that provide research, technical assistance, and services in order to "create positive, innovative, and sustainable improvements in education and human development." WestEd works with a range of clients at the state and local level, and is an approved service provider with several state departments of education, including the Arizona Department of Education, Colorado Department of Education, Hawaii Department of Education, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Tennessee Department of Education, and Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Numerous school districts throughout the country have also selected WestEd as an approved service provider, including Baltimore City Public Schools, New York City Board of Education, Oakland Unified School District, Tucson Unified School District, and Vail School District.
Reading Apprenticeship WestEd's Reading Apprenticeship program is a research-based instructional framework that is supposed to improve the teaching effectiveness of content-area middle and high school teachers, literacy coaches, and teacher educators. The approach helps adolescent students become more confident, engaged, and strategic readers.R. Schoenbach and C. Greenleaf, "Fostering Adolescents' Engaged Academic Literacy." In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer, and P. Smagorinsky (2009). New York: The Guilford Press. C. Litman and C. Greenleaf, "Traveling Together over Difficult Ground: Negotiating Success with a Profoundly Inexperienced Reading in an Introduction to Chemistry Class." In K. Hinchman and H. Sheridan-Thomas (2008). Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction. New York: The Guilford Press.
In 2010, WestEd received a federal Investing in Innovation (i3) grant to address the persistent academic achievement gaps in the nation's high schools by scaling up the Reading Apprenticeship model of academic literacy instruction. This collaborative effort is providing research-based, discipline-focused professional development to 2,800 high school of biology, U.S. history, and English language arts; and is reaching more than 400,000 students in 300 schools. In 2013, WestEd received another i3 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to adapt a rigorously researched face-to-face Reading Apprenticeship professional development model into an alternative web-based model for high school science teachers: Internet-Based Reading Apprenticeship Improving Science Education (). During the three-year grant period, 150 teachers and 33,000 students will be impacted by the professional development.
The first Reading Apprenticeship study was conducted in 1996–1997 in one San Francisco public high school. Students gained an average of two years growth in seven months of instruction measured on a standardized reading comprehension test, while engaging in rigorous, academic work rather than remediation focused on basic skills.Schoenbach, R., C. Greenleaf, C. Cziko, and L. Hurwitz (1999). Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons. Guzzetti, B. (2007). Literacy for the New Millennium: Adolescent literacy. Praeger. The program tenets and the results were published in the book, Reading for Understanding (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass), which recently had its second edition published. In 2005, a randomized controlled study of the efficacy of reading apprenticeship professional development for high school history and science teaching and learning was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Research.
In 2008, the Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study, also funded by the Institute for Education Sciences, reported that Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy had a positive and statistically significant impact on reading comprehension test scores (0.14 standard deviation; p-value = 0.015)."'No Effects' Studies Raising Eyebrows" (April 1, 2009) Education Week, p. 1 The 2010 Final Report of the Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study indicated, "Overall, the findings from these reports show that over the course of ninth grade, the ERO programs [Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy and Xtreme Reading] improved students’ reading comprehension skills and helped them perform better academically in their high school course work."Somers, M.-A., Corrin, W., Sepanik, S., Salinger T., Levin, J., and Zmach, C. (2010). The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study Final Report: The Impact of Supplemental Literacy Courses for Struggling Ninth-Grade Readers (NCEE 2010-4021). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education
Program for Infant/Toddler Care